Tang Zhengrong: CTO is the point where business thinking and technical thinking meet

Hello, I am Tang Zhengrong.

You may have heard of me, as a technical person, I am a veteran. In 1988, he was admitted to the Department of Computer Science of Tsinghua University, and two years later he went to Pittsburgh to complete undergraduate and graduate studies in computer science, and after graduation, he has been engaged in Internet technology in the United States until he returned to China in 2004 to join Alibaba, served as the CTO of Alibaba in Japan, was responsible for the migration of the main architecture of Taobao, and later served as A CTO in Tuniu, WeDoctor and VIPABC.

Ten years in the United States, ten years in China, I have been constantly thinking, deepening my understanding of the CTO position, today I want to talk to you about what the CTO can do from my more than 20 years of CTO experience.

On the one hand, I can feel that the position of CTO is indispensable in any Internet company today, especially in the entrepreneurial stage. Because every time I send a message in the WeChat group to recommend a "reliable CTO", I will be hit by countless red envelopes in an instant. But when I try to get to the bottom of their needs for CTOs, the answers are also very different. On the other hand, in the circle of CTO, I often hear confusion and even complaints about this job.

In fact, I am very reluctant to classify the crowd and evaluate it in the form of labels. But I think that in any company with a large demand for technology, there are indeed two types of people with large differences, one is more commercial thinking, and the other is more technical thinking. And the CTO is exactly the point where these two groups of people meet.

The CTO's "own" job

From the perspective of the CTO, I think the following three types of work should be regarded as their own work.

First, team building. Including recruiting new people, cultivating people, and eliminating people. If the team is bigger, it also includes cultural construction, system construction, and hierarchical system construction.

Second, repay technical debt. For example, tutorABC/vipJr I was in before is a 20-year-old Internet company with a lot of old systems, old code. One of my important tasks is decoupling and refactoring. I believe that all CTOs face this most difficult and complex problem. No matter how difficult it is, you have to solve it. Changing engines while driving an airplane has long been a common practice.

Third, technological upgrading. Internet technology is changing rapidly, and CMOs need to get some new technologies to land, blossom, and boost morale.

The year-end summary of other CTOs may include off-site multi-activity technology, mini programs, AI, and even blockchain technology. THE CTOs have been busy with their respective technical teams for a year, and after handing over such work, will the company be satisfied? I think it is necessary to do the above three points, it is a pass, but it may not be a high score. The person who is the meeting point, the CTO's work should also include the business value of the company.

What else can a CTO do?

What can a CTO do other than do what is recognized as "doing its job"? This obviously varies from person to person. Combined with the previous work content, I will share some practical work examples here. Any action is the product of thought. So I abstracted them into four ways of thinking: efficiency thinking, user thinking, cross-border thinking, and business thinking. No matter what kind of thinking, it must correspond to the business value of the company, and it should take the production of business value as the ultimate goal.

Efficiency thinking

Improving internal efficiency is often the easiest point for CTOs to cut into. There will be many similarities in your approach. For example, improve work processes, promote digital management, replace labor through automation, and so on. But one of the misconceptions that CTOs can easily fall into is that they only use statements to prove their achievements, rather than measuring efficiency with the company's costs.

The improvement of internal efficiency usually either saves money or saves people. But where did the money or people saved go? Has the company's total expenses or total headcount decreased? Has the money or people you worked so hard to save been taken to do something less efficient? If you can't answer the above questions, the efficiency gains may not really happen.

User thinking

CTOs are usually better at seeing the essence through superficial phenomena and prefer to systematically eradicate problems. We can define solving the customer's current problems and solving surface problems as short solutions; and systematically eradicating problems as long solutions. When seeking a balance between the short solution and the long solution, the CTO is easier to tilt to the end of the long solution. However, in today's highly competitive Internet environment, if the short solution is not enough, it cannot immediately solve the customer's current problems, which is likely to lead to customer churn and loss of competitive advantage.

Many times, after the problem has been reported layer by layer, it has lost the temperature and urgency of the time, and thus decayed into a number without temperature. At this time, it is easy to choose a long solution and ignore a short solution. For example, in a service, the data shows that one in 10,000 users has some kind of problem, and we tend to think that the problem is not big, and there are higher priority problems than this. But if we ourselves or our friends and relatives encounter this kind of problem, we are eager to solve it immediately, immediately. The reason the latter is more urgent is that we have a strong perception of the user, empathy. The former has become a cold number that doesn't inspire our empathy.

The CTO can solve this problem. On the one hand, through the system, try to let the user's problems be transmitted to the background as originally as possible, so that the person who solves the problem can see the scene at that time and the urgency of the problem user. On the other hand, CTOs need to motivate and cultivate the team's user awareness and user thinking ability. Only by allowing more employees to do a good job of balancing short solutions and long solutions can the balance at the company level be better.

Cross-border thinking

Some CTOs have done multiple industries, and some CTOs understand multiple industries. I think cross-border thinking is a CTO-specific skill. And this skill may bring great value to the enterprise.

The CTO is a group of people who are often exposed to the most advanced technology and the most advanced business model of the Internet. If we can jump out of our own industry and see how other industries are solving problems, we may be able to bring great opportunities for innovation to our business. I feel fortunate to be able to stand on the shoulders of my predecessors, take cross-border thinking to the extreme, and let us race on different tracks with ordinary competitors.

Business thinking

Most of the technology and product development in the company belongs to the cost center, is the back-end support department. But if the technology becomes more and more powerful, it may be possible to use the technology to directly generate business value, so that the back office directly becomes the front desk.

This event not only created new business value for the company, but also allowed the technology department to go from the backstage to the front desk to experience the core links of products, marketing, sales and service. This has a great role in promoting the direct involvement of the technology department in the company's core business. A technical team that fully understands the company's business model must be one of the company's core competitiveness.

Modern businesses are increasingly dependent on technology. CTOs are the meeting point of the business-minded and tech-thinking people in the enterprise. Therefore, the role of the CTO in business and organizational strategies is the hub. Good hubs allow for smooth information communication, fast business decisions, unleashed technical capabilities, and efficient and competitive businesses.

Of course, these experiences are all sorted out in the latest interview column, showing me from ordinary programmers all the way to the CTO of listed companies, to now starting my own business as a CEO, cognitive upgrading, and management experience.

It also includes some very interesting stories, such as "criticized by Ma Yun for being too heavy on the structure", "Less than a year after going to Tuniu, I successfully went to nasdaq to ring the bell", "Guan Mingsheng, who is known as 'Alimama', personally guided how to manage" and a series of interesting and vivid stories of the big factory, it is recommended that everyone have time to take a look.

About "Me"

I am Tang Zhengrong, founder and CEO of Yunyu Intelligent, former senior director (M5/P10) of Taobao, Alipay, B2B, Alibaba CTO of Japan, responsible for Taobao technology architecture transformation, the creation of Alipay, Ababa International Station reconstruction and Taobao Japan and other projects, after leaving Ali, I have served as WeDoctor CTO, Tu travel CTO, iTutorGroup COO &CTO.

Since then, I have more than 20 years of CTO experience, and I have done many lectures on the career development of technical people and CTO management, but these contents are relatively sporadic and not systematic.

This interview column is the first time that I have completely and systematically shared my years of management experience and thinking with it, I will share my years of experience with you without reservation, I believe that you will gain something after reading it.

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